Spotify Jam lawsuit

VCU Brandcenter. Photo Credit: Jeff Auth

Did Spotify rip off the idea for its Jam social-listening offering? Five former VCU Brandcenter students believe so, and they’re suing for $10 million as a result. Meanwhile, Spotify is adamant that the claims “have no factual or legal basis.”

Those plaintiffs recently submitted the straightforward action to the Richmond Circuit Court, though their allegations center on a nearly decade-old Brandcenter “project involving Spotify.”

Dubbed Spotify Jams and pertaining to social listening, said project “started as an assignment” for the then-students before evolving into “a passion project that they believed could be a game changer,” according to the legal text.

And the way they tell the story, the plaintiffs – one of whom looks to be working as a product designer, another as a copywriter – subsequently “shared the project with faculty and others and received overwhelmingly positive feedback.”

The feedback allegedly set the stage for an ill-advised suggestion to send a comprehensive Spotify Jams pitch – describing “the project in detail” and enabling “Spotify to leverage the platform to make listening once again a social experience” – to the namesake company.

(“Spotify users would be able to listen to music in real time with any other Spotify user whether they are in the same room or across the country,” the suit elaborates of the plaintiffs’ Jams concept. “A person could start a JAM or join a friend’s JAM or collaborate to their songs, or chat with friends about the song choice.”)

In short, the relevant documents allegedly made their way (more on this below) to a non-party named Spencer Hansen, who served as Spotify’s creative director between 2016 and early 2020.

Unsurprisingly, in light of the suit, the plaintiffs maintain that they didn’t receive a response from him or his employer.

Nor did they receive “compensation or acknowledgement” – including after Spotify in September 2023 introduced the similarly named Jam, billed as “a personalized, real-time listening session for your group.” In doing so, the service allegedly “unjustly enriched” itself at the plaintiffs’ expense.

“Spotify has taken the position that this is all a ‘coincidence,’ even though Spotify just happened to call it ‘JAM,’” the suit spells out. “Upon information and belief, Spotify has made a lot of money on the idea, which was first originated by Plaintiffs.”

As such – and, perhaps not coincidentally, against the backdrop of a social-listening craze – the filing parties are looking to secure a piece of that money. Specifically, they’re pushing for a jury trial and up to $10 million in damages plus interest.

When contacted for comment, Spotify provided DMN with a copy of the response it’d sent to the plaintiffs’ counsel.

Dated November 2023 – despite the fresh suit, the dispute has apparently been simmering for a while – the letter claims that the plaintiffs’ Jams email and documents never actually reached Spotify.

“After looking into this issue,” Spotify’s letter reads in part, “we confirmed that the spencerh@ email address does not exist and has never existed at Spotify, including at the time Exhibit A was purportedly sent. We further confirmed that Spotify never received the email.

“Simply put, your clients’ claims rest solely on an unsolicited pitch that was not delivered to anyone at Spotify because it was sent to a non-existent email address. As such, your clients have no factual or legal basis to make their implied breach of contract, unfair trade practices, fraud, and conversion claims.”